Zionist Organization of America - excerpt from Lee O'Brien, American Jewish Organizations and Israel, 1986

This page is an extract, reproduced with permission, from Lee O'Brien, American Jewish Organizations and Israel, Washington DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1986.

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Year established: 1897 President: Alleck Resnick National Executive Director: Paul Flacks Ad'dress: 4 East 34th Street, New York, NY 10016 Publications: The American Zionist (quarterly), The Zionist Information, News Service (ZINS, weekly)

General Background

Although its date of establishment is officially the same as that of the first Zionist Congress, ZOA did not really exist as such until 1918. Twenty years earlier, Zionists in America had formed the loosely organized Federation of American Zionists, which acted primarily as ‘an extension of the European Zionist movement.’ The Zionist organization in America was described at the beginning of 1914 as ‘small and weak, in great financial distress, and low in morale.’ In 1918, American Zionist leader Louis Brandeis proposed to transform this loosely federated structure into a centralized organization, controlled by a national office. The new body that emerged was the ZOA. Its initial framework was that of a mass movement, with dues-paying members; by 1920

The principle of organization was becoming that of a cadre party. But an elected national executive and annual conventions were retained." ZOA's only goal was ‘rebuilding Palestine’, and its image was that of the American branch of the Zionist movement.

Convinced that the work of the new organization should focus on supporting the economic development of Palestine, Brandeis saw fundraising as the main function of ZOA during this period, but the organization was not particularly successful at this task. Without concerning itself too much with the ‘Zionist doctrine’, its leaders : Pinned their hopes on the appeal of Palestine. Even so, ZOA's appeal as an organization remained weak. From 149,000 members in 1918, the year after the Balfour Declaration, its membership dropped to no more than 18,000 in 1929.46 As a Zionist organization, it failed to capture the Jewish masses in the United States until after the establishment of the state of Israel.

Structure and Funding

ZOA is a non-profit, tax-exempt membership organization, registered in the state of New York. All contributions and dues to ZOA are tax deductible.

During the last few years, ZOA has launched an aggressive campaign to recruit members; current membership is put at approximately forty five thousand. While its official literature continues to appeal for membership, ZOA's outgoing president, Ivan Novick 38, claimed in 1983 that

Notwithstanding the fact that most Jewish organizations are having problems sustaining membership, ZOA has been able to maintain its strength.

In addition to its national headquarters in New York City, ZOA conducts its Zionist activities in the United States through a network of twenty professionally staffed regional offices and three hundred local districts.* About 265 local representatives sit on the national executive committee. The national office, which houses ZOA's Women's Division and the New York metropolitan regions, has a staff of twelve. In Israel, ZOA maintains two permanent offices, one at the ZOA House in Tel Aviv, and the other at the Kfar Silver ZOA Campus in Ashkelon. ZOA's activities are supported by a fundraising arm, the American Zionist Fund. According to The American Zionist (April-May 1983), this fund has raised more than $1 million a year for the past several years.

Israel Support Work

ZOA's ideological stand within political Zionism is identified with that of the Likud coalition in Israel. As such, ZOA emphasizes free enterprise Zionism, reiterates the validity of official Israel policy, and promotes the integral connection between the United States and Israel on the axis of freedom, democracy and opposition to Soviet influence in the Middle East.

From its literature, ZOA appears' to be still grappling with the questions of its relevance to the Zionist enterprise and its service to the Jewish state. In its efforts to justify its historical continuity, ZOA dubs itself as ‘the cutting edge of American Jewry’ and maintains that it

Led the campaign to achieve the political acceptance of Israel by American and world leaders" and thus "helped to establish Israel."

Today, it sees its role as helping ‘to defend Israel.’48 However, it makes a point of distinguishing itself from other Jewish organizations that defend Israel by highlighting the relevance of its political Zionism: the ZOA stand, it reaffirms, is not merely pro-Israelism. Accordingly, the theme of its eighty-third national convention (spring 1983) was ‘the Guardians of the Dream’. That convention included a number of sessions on antiSemitism, Soviet Jews, the ‘oil weapon’, U.S.-Israeli relations, Israel and the Zionist movement, the ‘Jewish Evangelical Coalition’, and Israel and American Jews. Among the major speakers were Elliott Abrams, U.S. assistant secretary of state; Gideon Patt, Israeli minister of commerce and industry; Harry Hurwitz from the Israeli Embassy; Senator Arlen Specter, Republican from Pennsylvania; and several State Department representatives. Paul Flacks, ZOA's national executive director, set the tone for the meeting in his address.

We must continue to explain to American Jews that the Zionist Organization of America is the advocate of the free enterprise system, the American system of freedom which we espouse and support as citizens of our beloved nation. As General Zionists we appeal to all religious groupings and political affiliations, and as such, represent the focal point of Jewish concerns and the base of real Jewish unity [emphasis in original].

In a June 1983 meeting of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington, an umbrella organization of 260 Jewish groups, the delegate assembly of the Council voted 98 to 70 against admitting the New Jewish Agenda (NJA), a social action group that differs from other Jewish organizations in its willingness to concede the principle of Palestinian self-determination. ZOA was one of the two organizations that openly campaigned to exclude the NJA. In defense of its position, Irwin Stein, president of ZOA's local chapter, said that

we feel a group like this is not within the mainstream of thinking of the Jewish community .... They don't fall within the kind of thinking that is current in the Jewish

community.

In the United States, ZOA monitors the activities of Congress, the White House, and government offices in Washington. Through its Zionist Information News Service (ZINS), ZOA distributes to its sponsor members a weekly news bulletin ‘filled with vital information not usually found elsewhere.’ It provides its sustaining, patron, and sponsor members with public affairs memoranda that include copies of all Israel-related memoranda ZOA circulates to government officjflls and to the press, plus action guidelines. ZOA is a member of the National Inter-Religious Task Force on Soviet Jewry. It recently cosponsored a New York City symposium on ‘Catholics and Jews’ with other Jewish organizations and the Archdiocese of New York. It cooperates with the Christian Embassy in Jerusalem through the External Affairs Department of the WZO-American Section.

In what it launched as Project Energy Independence described as an ‘educational campaign devoted to disarming OPEC's hold on our nation,’ZOA mounted virulent attacks on Arab oil producers. Following an unattributed bombing in New York's La Guardia airport, ZOA placed an ad in the 12 January 1976 Washington Star that read

Regardless of who placed the bomb at La Guardia Airport, there can be no doubt that the terror climate fostered in the world by the Arab states and the PLO caused this outrage. The Arab states and the PLO have created a terror climate of epidemic proportions (emphasis in original). The reader was then urged to join ZOA in order ‘to fight terror’.

Unlike some other Zionist organizations in the United States, ZOA adheres to official Israeli policy. In response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, ZOA president Ivan Novick told the national executive Committee

By its action in Lebanon, Israel has bravely confronted the terrorist PLO which had demonstrated its contempt for human life by its inhuman shelling of Israel's population centers in its continuing violent objectives aimed at destroying the Jewish state." In August 1982, ZOA leaders went on a ‘solitary mission ... to stand by Israel in these trying times.’

In addition to touring military installations in Lebanon, they met privately with Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir. After the massacre in Sabra and Shatila camps, Novick commented

Israel would not knowingly be a participant in such carnage ... the entire thing is contrary to everything Jews hold sacred.

In 1984, ZOA sponsored an ad in the New York Times under the title ‘Hosni Mubarak and the Plot to Murder Peace’. The ad urged the United States to act now and denounce ‘Egypt's plot against peace’. ZOA's youth programs encompass what it describes as Hebrew, Yiddish, and Zionist education. It organizes workshops and forums on college campuses to combat what it terms ‘anti-Israel Arab propaganda’ and maintains a youth auxiliary called Masada (the name of the ancient fortress where Jewish fighters commited mass suicide rather than surrender to the Romans). Operating under the direction of ZOA's Youth Department, Masada has chapters in high schools and colleges throughout the United States and publishes the quarterly Ayin L'Tzion (An Eye Toward Zion). Masada youth are involved in New York City's annual ‘Israel Day Parade’, in the Chanukah Torch Relay to hundreds of Jewish communities in the United States, and in pro-Israel political activities. The organization estimates that about one thousand Jewish young people participated in its activities in 1982-1983.

Perhaps the main activity of ZOA's Youth Department is the summer visit to Israel for teenagers and young adults (ages thirteen through to twenty-three). The program lasts forty days and culminates in a visit to Masada. During the summer of 1982, ZOA's Youth Department sent 311 young American Jews to Israel. Throughout these programs, Jewish youth are encouraged to reach the ‘ultimate goal’ of the Zionist movement immigration

The Masada Movement of the ZOA is anxious for our young people to fall in love with Israel, to return time and time again, and to make Aliyah.

ZOA's major activities in Israel are twofold: cultural, through the ZOA House in Tel Aviv, and educational, through the Kfar Silver Campus complex in Ashkelon. Established in 1953, the ZOA House offers a variety of seminars, symposia, exhibits, and celebrations intended to foster U.S.-Israeli cultural relations and facilitate the adjustment of American immigrants to Israel. Among the English-language programs of the House are the Institute for Israel Studies and the Monthly Dinner Club, which features Israeli political personalities and American Jewish leaders. The Kfar Silver Campus (named after Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver and established in 1955) includes agricultural, technical, aviation, nursing, and academic schools, with an enrollment of about seven hundred Israeli students.